Will Elijah Millsap get picked in tonight's NBA draft?

Elijah Millsap walks down the court during his final game at UAB. (Birmingham News/ Mark Almond)

Elijah Millsap has spent much of the past month trying to prove to NBA teams that he is a worthy draft pick.

It’s been a grueling pro­cess, according to Millsap. It’s also just a start toward chasing an NBA dream.

“Everything in this whole process is a test,” said the 6-foot-6, 215-pound Millsap, who was an All-Conference USA selection at UAB last season. “I felt like I passed the first test. Whatever happens (in the draft), it’s not the end, it’s a begin­ning.”

Millsap will know to­night if he’s been picked in the NBA Draft, which will begin at 6 p.m. on ESPN. Sixty players will be se­lected during the two rounds, and if the mock drafts on the Internet are right, Millsap won’t be se­lected.

“I feel like I’m in great shape for the draft,” Mil­lsap said. “I don’t look at mock drafts because those aren’t the people making the decision. I have some teams who are genuinely interested.”

Millsap’s final decision to skip his last year of eli­gibility at UAB came just before the May 8 deadline to take his name out of the draft. Since then, he’s fin­ished coursework at UAB for his college degree and moved to Utah to be with his family.

Millsap also worked out with at least a dozen NBA teams, including Utah, Minnesota, Chicago, Detroit, Dallas, Atlanta, New Jersey, Charlotte, Portland and Indiana. Recent workouts with Utah, Indiana and Detroit came on successive days.

He believes he performed well at all but two of the workouts. He struggled in Minnesota, he said, because it was his first workout and he didn’t know what to expect. He also had trouble in Portland while working out, in part because of a stomach virus.

Other than that, though, he was pleased with his workouts and believes he’ll find a spot in the draft. Utah Jazz player personnel vice president Walt Perrin apparently agrees, telling the Deseret News that “we have him as a probable second-round pick.”

He won’t necessarily go to Utah, which has one second-round pick (No. 55 overall), but the thought of being picked by Utah intrigues Millsap because it would give him a chance to join his older brother, Paul, on the roster. Paul Millsap led the nation in rebounding in all three of his seasons at Louisiana Tech but still wasn’t selected in the 2006 NBA Draft until Utah took him with the 47th overall pick. He has become a fixture in Utah’s rotation and signed a fouryear deal worth $32 million before the 2009-10 season.

Elijah said his brother’s success has helped in his quest to find a spot in the NBA.

“Teams tell me all the time how they wish they wouldn’t have missed out on my brother like they did,” Elijah said. “They don’t want to make that mistake again.”